Popular Sovereignty Dbq

In 1852 the term “Popular Sovereignty” was created. This was a political idea that said the people who lived in a region should have the right to decide for themselves what type of government they wanted to have. In America, it was applied to the idea that colonists of a land had to decide under what terms they wanted to join the Union; it was applied to the status of either a free state or slave state. “The first crisis occurred when California, whose population had exploded in the gold rush, petitioned for statehood as a free state in December 1849. Admitting California, however, would upset the current, carefully wrought balance of fifteen slave states and fifteen free states”9

Lewis Cass initiated the concept, and later on S. Douglas took

over. In 1852, when Kansas and Nebraska were becoming territories, they had to vote whether they wanted to be a free or a slave state. But how is often the case, people from all over the country would fly over and cheat the system. Douglas wanted to impose sovereignty everywhere. Which led to Bleeding Kansas; Bleeding Kansas was a political confrontation where whites would fight each other over free or slave states. “This move infuriated anti-slavery residents, who set up their own free-state government in Lawrence, Kansas. Tensions escalated as those on both sides began to arm themselves. In the spring of 1856 a horrifying guerrilla broke out. Towns were burned, and citizens murdered, inspiring the name “Bleeding Kansas.”10
It wasn’t until the Reconstruction of Amendments that “rights” for people of color people started to exist.

When the American Civil War started, President Lincoln put together the problem and thought of it as concerning. He didn’t like the practice of slavery, and he also knew that neither people from the North nor the residents of the slave states that were in the border slave would be okay with the abolition as the aim for the war. Lincoln saw the abolition as a military strategy. He then presented a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, stating that slaves should be free. Although the Emancipation didn’t free any slaves, in my opinion, it was a turning point for the black community. When the Thirteenth Amendment came out, the Emancipation became a law. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, stating “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their

jurisdiction.”11
During this time, congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was meant to help black slaves in the South. Four million slaves were freed as a result of the victory in the war. It helped negotiate labor contracts, education, inheritance, and marriage documentation. “Authority over the freedmen fell under the auspices of a War Department agency, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, established in March 1865. In addition to distributing medicine, food, and clothing to newly emancipated slaves, the Freedmen’s Bureau, as it was called supervised captured Confederated lands.”12
The economy in the South was a disaster after the abolition. In 1870s, conflict emerged between whites that owned land trying to create a labor force and blacks that were now free looking economic independence. Many slaves were expecting the government to give them some land as reimbursement for the work they did during the slavery period. During Reconstruction, however, the problem over labor led to the sharecropping system, where blacks rented small portion of land to get a portion of their crop in return, which had to be given to the owner of the land at the end the year. “Typical contracts gave the landowner 50 percent of the crop and the laborers 50 percent, although drafting a typical sharecropper contract proved daunting.”13 It was often called “slavery with wages” because once you were in, you couldn’t leave. It also created a debt peonage. For example, if you earned $65 the landowner would tell you to pay $70, so the debt was never ending.
Regardless of slavery being abolished, blacks were denied some rights such as bearing arms or assembling after dark. “Blacks were denied the right to bear arms or assemble after dark, clearing violating the provisions of the United States Constitution.”14
The abolition of slavery was not good news for everybody, a lot of people were against blacks, because of the mindset they’ve been carrying for a long time.

Some of these people were the members of the Ku Klux Klan. Created in 1866, the KKK was a big thing in almost every state in the South by 1870. Its members led a campaign full of intimidation and violence towards blacks and whites who supported them. Even though congress passed a legislation that was meant to get rid of their terrorism, the organization didn’t want to give up and wanted to create an establishment of white supremacy. “Klansmen spread a reign of terror across the south, lynching blacks and any whites who might support them. The Klan, although not yet including Catholics and Jews in its attacks, often left its calling card at a terror

scene.”14
Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 separated the South into five military districts. This led to the period known as Radical Reconstruction, where the 14th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1866. Ratified in July 1868, this amendment answered pre-Civil War questions about African American citizenship by stating that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.”15
In 1867, after the American Civil War, the First Reconstruction Act was passed, ignoring President Andrew Johnson’s veto, outlining how new governments based on men rights to vote were going to be established. The 15th Amendment was passed, where people had the right to vote regardless of their race “the Fifteenth Amendment (February 1869) forbade any state from depriving a citizen to vote because of their color, race, or previous condition of servitude.”16
Black men finally had the right to vote, but this didn’t make them totally free, they were segregated, the Jim Crow Law were stablished. Where segregation was required in schools, public transportation and even streetcars. Black women didn’t have the right to vote until 1920. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that segregation ended.
Frederick Douglass gave a speech in 1852 called “What to the Slave is the 4th?” And I feel this question is still relevant even after all these years. Of course, blacks are not slaves anymore. But most institutions still determine black people lives. This reality is evident in our criminal justice system. African Americans are about one million of America's millions of prisoners, according to the NAACP. They're “five times more likely to get incarcerated than whites.”17 Those numbers have obviously raised since the 1970s, when America's War on Drugs exploded the country's prison population in general. But as more people were sent to prison because of drug related crimes, black people had it worse than other races. The American Civil Liberties Union states that, “black people are 3.2% more likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana”18 than whites, even though the two use the drug at similar rates.
In addition, a criminal record can prevent anybody from getting a job, but one study made by Arizona State University found that even if a black man doesn't have a criminal record, he's less likely to be considered for a position than white men with felonies.19